Just thought I’d pass on the word that the Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 Beta is now available to download. VS2010 SP1 Beta ships with a go live license which means you can start using it for production work though I’m not sure I’m going to be that brave until I check it out a bit first.

I, for one, appreciate Microsoft making these resources available for free. I think it demonstrates their interest making sure we as developers and I.T. professionals have the resources we need to effectively solve the business problems we encounter.

With all the news and focus on the new features coming in Silverlight 5 I thought I’d take a few minutes to remind folks about the work that Microsoft has done on LightSwitch since the applications created by LightSwitch are Silverlight applications. LightSwitch makes it easier for non-coders to build business applications and easier for coders to maintain them.

For those not familiar with LightSwitch, it is a new tool that provides a easier and quicker way for coder and non-coder types alike to create line-of-business applications for the desktop, the web, and the cloud. The target audience for this tool are those power-user types who create Access applications for their organization. While those Access applications fill an immediate need, they typically aren’t very scalable, extendable and/or maintainable by the development staff of the organization. LightSwitch creates applications based on technologies built into Visual Studio thus making it easier for corporate developers to extend and maintain them.

LightSwitch is currently in beta but it will ultimately become a new addition to the Visual Studio line of products. Go ahead and download the beta to get a better idea of what the product can do for your organization.

If you didn’t get chance to watch the Silverlight Firestart event live during the webcast it is available online to view now. If you’re a Silverlight developer or perhaps a shop actively planning on developing a Silverlight application then you’re going to want to watch this video.

The Silverlight 5 feature set unveiled during the keynote is fantastic! I particularly like Scott’s approach and comments on the future of Silverlight. I appreciated his open and direct acknowledgment that there has “been a lot of angst on this topic in the last few weeks” and he took the bull by the horns and stated “Let me say up front that there is a Silverlight future, and we think it’s going to be a very bright one.” That comment drew applause from the local audience and in our local viewing event held in Raleigh, NC.

Of course my first question was when can we get our grubby little hands on Silverlight 5 and start working with it. The answer unfortunately wasn’t “right now” but they did announce the Silverlight 5 beta will be available in the first half of 2011. Of course the following is pure speculation on my part but I wouldn’t be surprised if they made it available at a certain event in April 2011.

Additional information about the Silverlight 5 announcement is available on Scott’s blog.

There are times when the amount of text to be displayed in a TextBlock just doesn’t fit and only the initial text that fits is displayed. Usually the user can detect this because they realize, based on the content, that something got chopped off but that isn’t always the case. For example, the following text could fit in a fairly narrow TextBlock:

“Never comment your code”

Unfortunately the rest of the sample sentence ,“Never comment your code if you want to keep your job”, doesn’t display and the user has no way of logically knowing they’re missing anything.

This is where the TextTrimming property comes in handy. Setting the TextTrimming property to WordEllipis will cause a “…” to appear at the end of the text.

XAML: <TextBlock Name="textBlock1" TextTrimming="WordEllipsis" />

Code: textBlock1.TextTrimming = TextTrimming.WordEllipsis;

The result is “Never comment your …” which visually indicates there is more text available than meets the eye.